How to Listen to Birds Episode 5

Stephen takes a trip to RSPB Scotland's Wood of Cree nature reserve. With the help of local expert Crystal Maw he hears some of the specialist birds that call this ancient woodland home. There's Pied Flycatcher, Redstart and the stunning song of the Wood Warbler. Crustal also explains how RSPB Scotland looks after this special place.

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Transcript

Stephen Magee: 0:00

I'm Stephen Magee and this is episode 5 of how to Listen to Birds. It's incredible the range there is and you're always learning every single year and it's great fun. Some people describe it as a laughing bandit, so it was ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha. I'll shoot you.

Crystal Maw: 0:29

It's definitely in their advantage to rise above the rest. Don't want to be a one trick pony. It's got a bigger back catalogue than Taylor Swift. This is how to Listen to Birds.

Stephen Magee: 0:56

Hello and welcome to episode 5. I've been a bit lazy today. A lot of these other links have been recorded like oh my god, in the morning, it is lunchtime and I've popped out to do the links for episode five. But even like round the back of my house and like in the little woody bit near me in Edinburgh, there's still things to hear. There's a wood pigeon, there's always just like house sparrows just chatting away in the background, robin as well. A lunchtime highlight, though for me was a blackbird Just perched there. It goes again right on top of one of the tenement chimney pots. It's like three stories up singing away. I don't know if it's consciously doing this, but like the tenement back court, like for those of you who've never been, like maybe to scottish cities, like you get these tenements which are like flats, blocks of flats, and quite often they've got a shared back garden and they effectively like ring the back garden in on three or four sides. So this one's on three sides and I think it's just making an echo chamber for the song absolutely brilliant. So, yeah, it's never a dead loss for birdsong, is it? There's always something to hear.

Stephen Magee: 2:50

Anyway, this episode is not about the wee bit out the back of my house. It's about somewhere pretty, pretty amazing, which is the Wood of Cree, which is an RSPB Scotland nature reserve in the south west of Scotland, down in Dumfries at Galloway. It is a beautiful woodland. If you ever get the chance to go, you definitely should. Hopefully, after listening to this, you'll definitely want to. I have spent some time there with Crystal Maw, who used to work for us there and is now a volunteer, and she really knows the patch really well, and what I wanted to get out of this more than anything else was some of the really specialist species that you might hear down there, that you wouldn't hear in other places, and I think we got it. See what you think.

Stephen Magee: 3:35

Anyway, I will be back with a little bit of housekeeping and some bits and bobs at the end, but until then, here's the wood of Cree. Now there's one there and it's maybe quite hard to pick out. There's a da da, da, da, da da. Yeah, da, da, da, da da. Quite, jumpy, yeah, jumpy, kind of like trampolini, kind of a guy. Yeah, right, first of all, tell people what that is.

Crystal Maw: 4:11

That's a pied fly catcher. Oak woodland specialist mature oak woodland.

Stephen Magee: 4:15

For people who haven't seen a pied fly before, what's a pied fly like?

Crystal Maw: 4:20

oh, beautiful robin sized birds that. So the males are really strong black and white colors.

Crystal Maw: 4:32

If you're thinking zebra, no, not quite that, they're not straight, they're kind of blocks of black and white yeah, blocks of black and white and they've got this really cool set of blobs white blobs on the front of their heads. The females still have white in them, but they're more of a brown instead of black and they tend to kind of sit halfway to three quarters way up an oak tree and they'll do as their name suggests they'll catch flies from there. So they'll go around not quite as well as spotted fly catchers, but they'll still do this motion of flittering off their branch, going to catch an insect and then coming back to that branch again. So they'll do these little circular flights or zooms around kind of halfway up the canopy. So yeah, you've got a good chance of seeing them, especially if they're singing and you recognize that call. Look up to the near the tops of the trees and you'll. You'll spot them kind of doing loops around the branches.

Stephen Magee: 5:33

Yeah, I mean, if you get the chance, if you're in a lovely I mean not so much this morning because it's a bit gray, but like a dapply light woodland, you know, with with like low sun coming through and those black and white guys cutting about, you know they look amazing. And the and the other key thing right I would think about hearing that here is it means you know that this place is doing its job. Yeah, if it's got species like pied flycatcher in it.

Crystal Maw: 6:03

They're a specialist species. They only occur in these types of places with good habitat, and the habitat has to support large numbers of insects for them to breed here, so it also needs mature trees with holes in or nest boxes in which they can nest.

Crystal Maw: 6:22

So yeah if you've got them, it's a good sign of quite a special habitat, and they're also. They just sound, you know you said, like a trampoline. They sound like they're happy to be here. They've traveled thousands and thousands of miles to come here for the insects and the long day length to breed, and then they have to travel thousands and thousands of miles over the Sahara um to go back to their wintering grounds. So you know it's a special place if they're doing that that pied flycatcher I've seen was sitting in front of us.

Stephen Magee: 7:14

There's a big rushing river behind it and that sound still. It's amazing how that sound cuts through Like against really, really loud background noise.

Crystal Maw: 7:25

Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Magee: 7:26

Presumably in this woodland environment where everything's singing. That's what it's all about. It's being able to cut through.

Crystal Maw: 7:34

It's a competition it's a competition to be heard. It's right in front of us now. It's quite low down actually, it's still going there it goes.

Stephen Magee: 7:53

It's actually kind of given us a fly past.

Crystal Maw: 8:03

So, yeah, they'll all have all the birds singing. You know, in the dawn chorus will have a unique thing about them, so they'll either be really loud like a wren or a thrush or they'll be, you know, they'll have a noise that cuts through like a cuckoo dipper. You know dippers are really in noisy environments and they'll have this really metallic sound that cuts through all that noise around them.

Stephen Magee: 8:35

So a dipper for people who don't know is a little kind of almost like black bird sized bird, very dark brown in the back, white belly, lives around rivers, particularly russian kind of mountainy kind of rivers. Right, it's, it's it. It will actually walk under the water and feed um on invertebrates and stuff like on on the riverbed. So I think it's. Is it our only aquatic passerine? Would that be? Would that be right? So it's the only only you know, you know it's. It's not like a duck or something, right, it's, actually it's a normal like on the land bird that can walk under the water. It's got these nictitating membranes and stuff like that. It's insane, right, like insane bird, like in a lot of ways really emblematic of like upland, like spate burns and stuff.

Crystal Maw: 9:27

And they have signals in there. So they use kind of blinking signals as well. So you know their eyelids are white in comparison to their dark heads, so when they blink they purposefully blink, wink at other dippers, and you know that would be really obvious because it will be a sudden white flash that will disappear again. So that's another signal they have that overcomes this noisy environment.

Stephen Magee: 9:51

So they're doing like Morse code with their eyes. For those of you who can't see, crystal is now like manically winking at me, which is like I don't know whether to shut up about the birds or anything, but yet that's it. Yeah, but I mean yet another example of like how birds can adapt to their environment in ways that are just mind-blowing.

Crystal Maw: 10:17

Oh, yeah, definitely. So not the easiest one to pick out for me, I have to say, because it's quite a short fragment of song. It's like, yeah, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, tell us what that is. It's a redstart. Beautiful bird there. Beautiful bird they actually have, if you listen really carefully. On the end of the da, da, da da, they have what sounds like you scrunching up a crisp packet. But it's quite subtle.

Stephen Magee: 11:10

Well, I have to. I did find that a difficult one to pick out. I think the other thing is like you know what you're saying about the bit at the end of the crisp packet, but it's kind of hard to pick out here. I think it's one of the challenges of trying to work your way through the birdsong stuff. It's like you can listen to a really nice quality recording on the web before you go out. Life's different to that. You know, you know you won't.

Crystal Maw: 11:38

It won't be perfect, it'll be bits of it it'll be a fragment here and there, or it'll be alongside something else, and I guess you just have to persevere with that yeah, if you suspect you're hearing something slightly familiar, or maybe you don't know what it is, it's new just hang around for a bit in that spot and try and get more of it. Just persevere and hopefully you'll get that as close to the perfect recording as you can. The longer time you spend listening to it, it'll eventually come to you. We've come across an easier to hear redstart start and the little end phrase on it, so it shifts around and changes a bit.

Crystal Maw: 12:39

Mmm it does this one's showing it quite well. So sometimes it goes up in kind of like one of those whistle whistle toys, and sometimes it's that crispy, crisp packet crunch so the dee, dee, dee, dee is there, and then it just gets an extra little flourish on the end yeah, same bird same bird, just doing different yeah and again I mean we can't.

Stephen Magee: 13:25

I mean who knows right, because you can't speculate as to the motivation, the bird, really. But the working assumption would be it's just another way to show off your fitness. I can do more things.

Crystal Maw: 13:38

Yeah.

Stephen Magee: 13:39

I'm just a better redstart.

Crystal Maw: 13:41

Look how much energy I can expend on all this song. Look how much time I can spend learning stuff and sending it back to you. I'm pretty fit, I'm a good mate to be with. So that's what they're saying. Look how much I can show off, how much energy I have.

Stephen Magee: 14:32

So for a little bit there, we have had another like amazing specialty for here, yes, which is wood warbler Mmm.

Crystal Maw: 14:43

So it's a bit, bit, bit, bit bit brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Stephen Magee: 14:50

I don't know, but we were talking about the challenges of things being. But Is that a nuthatch? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've just got and the nuthatch has gone through quite strong. Now You've just got this constant over layering of song right, which actually is beautiful.

Crystal Maw: 15:13

I shouldn't complain about it, it's fantastic hearing all these different things.

Stephen Magee: 15:16

Yeah, but there you go. Not hatched then the wood warbler, but hearing the redstart and the wood warbler, and previously we heard the pied flycatcher. Right, that's, that's your three iconic species for here right, I mean, that's your food. That's your suite of like are. Tell, explain to people how specialist those species are well you.

Crystal Maw: 15:56

I'll tell you about the habitat first, and then you'll realize how specialist they are. So it's our most biodiverse habitat in the uk. It's really special, and these birds that are breeding you know pretty much only in those places they might, they might winter elsewhere. The birds that are coming here will be coming from Africa, sub-saharan Africa, west Africa, but they're coming especially to this habitat to breed, nowhere else. You might occasionally get redstarts in other habitats, but you know the wood warblers, the pied flycatchers, um, they're here and they're only here, so they're feeding on the insects that are here because of the high humidity. Um, all the luscious lichens and mosses.

Stephen Magee: 17:01

Every surface is supporting life and, like some of those bits of life on the surface are supporting other life, and it is it is. People use the phrase diverse a lot, yeah, right, and, and you get different kinds of diversity in different places, but this, this, is such a visibly audibly diverse environment. Right, there's so much going on in there, it's just really alive yeah, it's dripping with life, so it's so.

Crystal Maw: 17:29

Yeah, there's lots of insects here, you know, supported by all that oozing life, and then these birds are feeding on these insects and they're enjoying the long daylight hours here. And, you know, the mature trees will have holes in them that they can nest in, they'll have crevices that insects are living in and they'll have, you know, closed, canopy, open understory, or maybe there'll be a glade somewhere, or some boulders, there'll be a ravine, there'll be a crag. It's a real mixture. Glades are really important for insects as well. So that is what is really attractive to these birds, and they're, you know, they're coming for that. You won't find them in your garden, you won't find them on the moor. They'll be in these woodlands.

Stephen Magee: 18:43

We had a bit more of a show there, yeah. Yeah, we very briefly had the other song that you did and they mentioned the bee, bee, bee bee, I think just once, yeah, but then the rest of it was just, it's so intense, yeah.

Crystal Maw: 18:53

Yeah, they really go for it for so long in the season. They must get tired. We have spoken in the past about how coarse it sounds at the end of the season so I can tell because they tend to stick to the same territories.

Crystal Maw: 19:13

You can, you can get to know the individuals over a season and you can tell that the song at the end of the breeding season is very different to the beginning of the season, where it's clear, uh, very, um, pure kind of song. And then by the end of the season come june, july, you know it's kind of croaky, it's just very tired, it's a bit it doesn't come so readily, it's not clear and they're just, they just sound overall quite tired.

Stephen Magee: 19:43

It's like they've had like they're ready to go back to Africa yeah, they've had enough they'd be quiet for a bit yeah a moment of quiet reflection it definitely sounds like they've got to that point.

Stephen Magee: 20:18

I think we can safely say we've had the full wood warbler experience. So one's just been flying around in front of us. It's constantly on the move. Yeah, going to Still going, going from perch to perch, mostly doing that call the di, di, di, di, di, di di with the spinning coin, like you said at the end, and then sometimes following it all the way through and adding in the bee, bee, bee, bee at the end of it.

Stephen Magee: 20:59

So is he essentially marking out a territory? Is that what he's doing here, flicking from perch to perch, to perch to perch or is he just showing off? Is there any way of telling? I think their territories are much larger than the posts he's using, so by the way, that was the b b, b, b b b, the other bit of call. Yeah, yeah, so the territories are much larger much larger.

Crystal Maw: 21:24

Yeah, they'll be, they'll be using I mean, they're ground nesters so their. Their nest will be in under a rock boulder and some moss. I mean he's just showing off, as you said, we go into those little posts somewhere in the middle of his territory.

Stephen Magee: 21:45

Amazing noise. It really is. It's so intense, intense. That's better than that. In front of us there's carpet of bluebells, for a start. There are all these little mossy kind of hummocks like old stumps or rocks that are covered in moss. There's deadwood in front of us that's partially exposed, partially covered in moss. There's moss growing up, all of the trees here as well. If what you need from a habitat is loads of places where there'll be invertebrates to eat, loads of mossy holey kind of covery spots to nest, you can totally see why this is the perfect habitat for that bird. I mean, it is, it's, it's absolutely in the right place yeah, and it's.

Crystal Maw: 22:49

It's slightly different to what the pied fly catcher needs. They both need mature woodland, but but the pied flycatcher needs open understory in which to feed and the wood warbler. I mean, we're metres away from a pied flycatcher, I can hear everything, but there's a subtle difference. So where the pied flycatcher is is open and then where the wood warbler is in front of us, it's a much more dense understory. Yeah, so more places to hide, more places to feed, but you need those subtleties of habitat within that habitat and so we manage for that, or does that just you know?

Stephen Magee: 23:26

so we do so. How do you? How do you create these different?

Crystal Maw: 23:31

we manage it mainly by kind of tree management and browsing levels. So we'll monitor how much browsing is going on in the woods and we'll manage around that. And we also fell trees to open up areas so we selectively fell. We don't clear fell, but if an area is getting too dense with understory and we want more pie fly catches, we'll. You know, maybe halo fell around a specific tree to allow it to grow into a mature tree, but it has space underneath it, so we do things like that yeah, every time you think you've understood a landscape like this, for me, every time you think you've understood a landscape or a bird, there's another layer of complexity under it it's not just that, it's like the right old growth forest with the right mix of stuff.

Stephen Magee: 24:30

But yeah, that's the joy of it.

Crystal Maw: 24:35

We don't know everything. We're always learning and you adapt. You look at what habitat is being used, you do studies, you monitor and then you adapt your management to you, what you're learning so Crystal is very wise.

Stephen Magee: 25:10

We are always learning about all kinds of things. I am learning as I go along about birdsong, as I hope are some of you, and as ever, I will do a little recap of some of the things that we heard. Flycatcher it took us a while to get close to it, but once we did it added a kind of trampoline-y kind of feel to it. Then again it took a wee while to find Red Star, and it was the one that had actually a surprising amount of variation once you actually got up close to it. And then, finally, the one I was looking forward to more than anything else, which is Wood Wobbler Just an insane noise, so that spinning coin sound, and then after that occasionally be be be noise as well, but a real joy to hear.

Stephen Magee: 26:41

So next week's episode will also be about wood of Cree, but maybe less kind of the specialist species, and maybe a chance to hear some of the things that you might hear in other woodlands, in other places in the UK, again with Crystal. So please do keep an eye out for that. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please do leave us a review wherever you get podcasts and subscribe, but until next week. Thank you very much for joining us and goodbye. That was an oyster catcher going up on my head, amazing oyster catchers in town. Anyway, bye again.